Monday, July 25, 2016

It's getting to be catalogs time, and so some new DC Comics 2017 collections listings have now slipped out online. Among these, more new details about how DC will collect their initial Rebirth titles, and some unexpected surprises including collections of the Superman proto-Triangle Titles, the 1990s "Judgment Day"-era Justice League (lead by Wonder Woman), and Keith Giffen's Justice League: Breakdowns!

One headline here is that some of the Rebirth collections seem to collect their Rebirth specials, some don't, and some seem to collect it when it's also collected in their previous trade. All of this information is preliminary and subject to change; make of it what you will.

Another headline is that the earliest these books are solicited for is January, going as late as April. That's Superman Vol. 1, for instance, scheduled for January 10, 2017, and Batman Vol. 1 scheduled for January 17, 2017 (both of these listed as paperback, but again, subject to change). This seems like a long time for these books to arrive given that the last issue included in each, issue #6, arrives in September; however, the second Batman collection comes out in April, so three months between the first and second is quicker than before (same is true for Green Arrow, among others).

Go ahead and dip into the listings and let me know what you think on the other side.

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DC Rebirth Collections

Collects issues #957-926 (the first six issues). Obviously no Rebirth special here since the Superman: Rebirth special by Peter Tomasi would more properly be with his work, not Dan Jurgens's. The solicitation says paperback, but that's subject to change.

Collects issues #1-6. Now, again, all of this is preliminary, but the solicitation doesn't show the Rebirth collection included here, whereas it is supposed to be included in the Aquaman Vol. 8 collection that precedes this one. That's not a guarantee that Dan Abnett's Rebirth special won't be collected with his first issues, but it looks unlikely.

This should collect Batman 7-12 and the first annual, which means, first, there's going to be annuals, and second, that the Batman chapters of the "Night of the Monster Men" crossover will be collected individually in the Batman trade as well as in the crossover book.

Collects issues issues #934-939. So far most of the books seem to be sticking to six issues in the first collection, whereas the New 52 collections were more variable (the new Wonder Woman collection seems to be one exception).

More Harley Quinn than you can shake a stick at, with the six-issue Harley Quinn and Her Gang of Harleys, the six-issue Harley's Little Black Book, and Harley Quinn Vol. 1: Die Laughing (one of the few Rebirth collections to get a title), collecting the Rebirth special and issues #1-6.

Collects the miniseries. I'd hope this would turn into something for Hawkman and/or Adam Strange, but sight unseen I think "super-cosmic" really isn't what audiences want these days, and I would give this better odds if the story were more earthbound a la John Ostrander's Hawkworld.

All of these include the Rebirth special and issues #1-6. Again, the consistency is actually nice, versus the varying collection sizes of the New 52 books, though it remains to be seen how long that lasts.

One collection that, at least as far as these solicitations, only collects five regular issues. It's issues #1, #3, #5, #7, and #9, plus the Rebirth special, collecting the "modern day" half of Greg Rucka's story. Seems a shame we'll have to wait longer for the "modern part" to continue, but that's no different for the trade-waiters than it is for the twice-monthly readers.

Pre-Rebirth Reprints

There's a handful of troublesome "late" books in this list. This should collect the final issues of Batman/Superman, but it's said to come out in March 2017, well after the Rebirth books have started and about seven months after its previous collection. I guess that's about normal but I could see reason to speed this one up to December, even.

Said to collect issues #13-16 and the Annual #1. The second volume is out in August, so again February seems a long time to wait, though at least this one isn't as continuity-tied as other early/late books.

Should collect issues #19-25. The fourth Grayson volume is out in September, so March isn't an usual wait for Vol. 5, it's just strange when the RebirthNightwing Vol. 1 collection comes out the previous month.

Bronze Age and Beyond

Fewer contents than the Showcase Presents Batman and the Outsiders (to issue #12 vs. issue #19). I'm glad to see these reprinted in color but I'm skeptical as to the wide popularity; I hope for a second volume but I'd be surprised if there was one.

I've been chatting with some of you about this; we don't know what the exact contents will be yet, but of course we're all hoping this is really it, a Knightfall collection with all of "Knightsquest" and etc., everything not collected before.

In the ongoing saga, for a while we thought we might get a combination Contagion/Legacy collection, which became a Contagion collection, sans Legacy but with more interstitial Batman material than had been collected before. Well, it looks like another Legacy collection is solicited for April; the solicitation text is all wrong (refers to Contagion, wouldn't you know), but following the recent model maybe it will have more uncollected material (what's left in this era, actually?).

Collects Justice League America #53-60 and Justice League Europe #29-36 (the solicitation incorrectly calls it Justice League International), the fifteen-part story that ended Keith Giffen and company's bwa-ha-ha-era Justice League. For those of you playing at home, this book ends where the recent Superman and the Justice League collection picks up, and this leaves JLA #36-52 and JLE #11-28 uncollected.

This was the Roy Thomas special that sent the Justice Society off to Ragnarok (and out of day-to-day continuity) after Crisis on Infinite Earths. As a commenter mentions below, it's just a 68-page special, so not a lot for a collection. At just $20, it might be just this special and some filler, but it'd make my year if this contained the four-part Armageddon Inferno, the story that brought the JSA back from Ragnarok. I recall that story being a tad rough, but it is written by John Ostrander with a variety of artists including Walt Simonson, Tom Mandrake, and Art Adams.

The name calls it "complete," but the solicitation says it only contains issues #1-13, whereas that Wildstorm series actually ran to issue #20. Most of these issues are already collected in three individual volumes. There's a miniseries or two that could have been collected here to really be complete-complete.

Collects Adventure Comics #397-402 and #404-424, Supergirl #1-11, and Superman Family #165. Someone more in the know than me can tell more about these issues, but these see Supergirl go off to college and try a variety of costumes. At first I wondered if this was re-collecting the Daring Adventures of Supergirl issues we just got, but indeed those are two different series (1970s and 1980s).

This is very exciting. Though the actual triangles wouldn't appear on the covers of the connected Superman titles for a couple years, this looks to be the first hardcover collection of the issues, largely by the Triangle team, that would eventually encompass the Triangle era. The solicitation for this is woefully cut off, but we know this collects at least Adventures of Superman #445-450 and Superman #23 (Action Comics was weekly and somewhat unrelated at this time), which follows immediately from the end of John Byrne's run, the end of which was collected in Superman: Man of Steel Vol. 9. I'd guess it's Superman #23-27, which goes through the Invasion tie-ins; the next volume ought to collect the same issues as found in the Superman: Exile trade, including the return of Action Comics.

Here's hoping this series continues to collect at least through what's not collected by the Death of Superman books, if not beyond. Again, very exciting -- some of the best Superman work of the modern era.

Said to collects House of Secrets #92 and Swamp Thing #1-25. My records show this 1970s Swamp Thing series only goes up to #24, but maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, I believe only about 10 issues of this have been collected, so that's a nice take if I'm thinking of the right thing.

People -- run to pre-order this book. There are stories that I think are great that I've wanted collected for a while (still waiting on the classic Titans Hunt collection), there are stories that I think would make great trades that are being collected (Aquaman: Sub-Diego), and then there are issues I haven't thought of in years, that aren't even particularly good, but that are such a part of the fabric of certain eras of comics that the sudden thought of encapsulating them in a trade is just too good to pass up.

As such we find ourselves with a proposed collection of Justice League America #78-93 and the Annual #7, which stretches from just after "Death of Superman" up to Zero Hour. The issues are, again, not particularly good, they're very much a product of the 1990s, there's a lot of Guy Gardner mouthing off and Booster Gold in a tin suit and Wonder Woman and Captain Atom snarking at one another. These are the comics, lemme tell you, that lead into Extreme Justice. But on the other hand, they're the comics that lead into Extreme Justice. You cannot say no to this collection.

Included here as well are parts of the "Judgment Day" crossover with Justice League Task Force and Justice League Europe, and I'm hopeful those issues end up here, too.

And it's only Vol. 1! Could we actually see a collection of the Gerard Jones-lead Justice League America with Nuklon, Obsidian, and Blue Devil? Pre-order, pre-order, pre-order, people!

Man, I love that DC is going all out collecting stuff from the mid/late-80s and early-90s. I expect we'll be seeing a lot of older Aquaman stories getting released in the next year or so, especially Peter David's hairier, angrier Aquaman. Wouldn't say no to a reprint of the Bryan Q. Miller Batgirl run, either, given Stephanie Brown's Rebirth status.

Woab! A Swamp Thing Bronze Age Omni!? FINALLY collecting the first 25 issues of the previously uncollected first run of Swamp Thing! If this is released, it would explain why they canceled the Roots of a Swamp Thing v.2. I'm very excited for this. It seems a little light for an Omnibus, at 26 issues. I'm hoping they can cram in #1-19 of Saga of the Swamp Thing as well, bringing it at about 50 issues.

Hopefully, if the twice-monthly publishing schedule holds up, we'll see these Rebirth trades more quickly.

JLA Bronze Age Archives appears to go 10 issues past the last JLA Archives, which reached #93. Definitely a go for this one.

Supergirl Bronze Age Omnibus? IN! I love that era of Supergirl. Some of the first comics I read were her Adventure Comics issues. I remember one issue where she's in a dimension/other planet ruled by women. I see it collects Supergirl #11, which was not published as a single issue, but somewhere else, IIRC. Either Superman Family or Canceled Comics Calvacade? Either way, Supergirl #10 guest starred Prez (the original) and was reprinted in the recent Prez collection.

Definitely in for a Swamp Thing Bronze Era Omni. Hope it includes some of Swampy's appearances outside his own book. He guest starred briefly in the Challengers of the Unknown mid-70s revival. Plus he appeared in Brave and the Bold with Batman.

Midnighter Complete Collection.

Batman and the Outsiders. I'll get to support this series, but I recently read the Showcase volume, and my fond memories were a bit disappointed. Great Jim Aparo art, but some of the stories were lame, and then there's the "romance" between Geo-Force and Halo when he's an adult and she's underage. Icky.

Batgirl volume, well if it's Bronze Age stuff, sure. There were a lot of Batgirl backups, and her Showcase Presents volume was a lot of fun to read. This seems more like a decades-wide retrospection, though.

About The Batman and the Outsiders book. It says it collects #1-12. Hopefully it will include issue #13. In the two-part Katana origin (#11-12) Batman is poisoned. In #13 trying to save his life, Alfred reveals his Bruce's identity to the Outsiders. Then they "help" a drugged and loopy Batman by reenacting the death of his parents by Joe Chill. At the end of the story Batman unmasks for the Outsiders on his own. It is a good capper to the first year of Batman and the Outsiders.

More Bronze/Modern Age goodness. Which is ironic as we are surely in the Golden Age of DC trade collections. I'm gobsmacked at some of the titles being listed here. Will pre-order them all just to help them see the light of day. Fantastic.

I feel the same way about the Superman collection. I love the post-Byrne Roger Stern run and the Ordway "Adventures of Superman" issues, as well, and that will be a great book. But they should have just started with the post-Crisis reboot and gone from there. I'm hoping the fact that they didn't means we might finally get an Omnibus series of the Superman-AoS-Action era that immediately followed "COIE".

I think we should all feel proud to live in an age where even Dan Vado's JLA run gets collected. The description doesn't seem right, though, because it would leave the "Judgment Day" crossover incomplete, not to mention it includes a loose chapter of Priest's Triumph story (which ran in all JL books for a month) and apparently skips issues #0, which is set between #92 and #93. It would make more sense to devote 2 volumes to Vado's run and then another 2 to Jones's. And then bring on Extreme Justice: The Complete Collection!

Superman: The Man of Tomorrow is very exciting because it could end up covering everything between Byrne's run and "Panic in the Sky", or maybe even the run-up to "The Death of Superman". Hopefully the second volume will be a more complete version of the Superman: Exile collection, which won't skip the Luthor-centric stuff like Superman #31 and the backup stories from Superman #30 and Adventures of Superman #653-654.

As for the collections of newer material, since Justice League #51 will be included in the Titans Hunt TPB, I think there's a good chance issue #52 will be included in the first Action Comics Rebirth volume, since Jurgens wrote it and it can be seen as a prelude to his run. And the description of Grayson Vol. 5 is obviously wrong, since the series ended with issue #20. It should collect issues #17-20, Annual #3 and maybe Nightwing: Rebirth, since it wraps up a few of the series's dangling threads.

"I think we should all feel proud to live in an age where even Dan Vado's JLA run gets collected." Yes and yes and yes. But is it possible to read the JLA "Judgment Day" issues without the rest? I know it lacks Ice's actual death, but could it conceivably read complete, like some Green Lantern crossovers read complete series to series?

Man of Tomorrow is also exciting -- if I can see comics with Mr. Z collected in hardcover, I'll die happy. The question is where to stop -- there's some good stuff after "Death of Superman," no doubt, but I think we're in the weeds by "Death of Clark Kent," and certainly "Millennium Giants" is way too far. Where would you pull the plug?

As I recall, "Judgment Day" is one of those tight crossovers where you realy have to read every chapter. I fact, even after that story was over, the three Justice League books remain very closely tied all the way through the Zero Hour tie-ins, so I'd prefer to see all that stuff collected in a second volume, with the first one ending right before "Judgment Day".

As for the Man of Tomorrow ending point, I think right before the Death/Return saga would be best, because otherwise the collections would have to cover a whole lot of material that has already been collected many times before. Come to think of it, the same can be said about "Panic in the Sky", which just got a more comprehensive TPB including the aftermath issues, but maybe they could just skip those 12 issues.

Anyway, I think the post-Return stuff should be collected under a new name (I suggest "The Mullet Years"), and end just before the Electric Superman stuff, which should get a different branding.

I like the Electric Blue Superman visuals, but I don't know, when we get into Strange Visitor and Scorn and stuff ... that's all got a special place in my heart but it's far from Superman's proudest moments. Maybe end at the wedding?

I hope they print as much of the Triangle era as possible. Sure, some of it's probably not good but this will be one of the best ways to get a lot of that material. I'm also excited to see the Electric Blue Superman stuff, even if it wasn't very good. Plus, I'm hoping Millenium Giants will get a trade. I love it in a "it's so bad it's good" kind of way.-Kon30

That's a lot of material though, like over 100 issues worth of material times three or four or five series. I just don't have faith these collections will go that long; I'm betting it cuts at Death of Superman, especially since that's been reprinted so often already.

I think the only chance that I'm gonna buy the "Wonder Woman & the Justice League America Vol. 1" is if it does include all chapters from the "Judgment Day" crossover. Otherwise, what's the point in reading a book that has no full story? Unfortunately, DC doesn't appear to think that way...

It seems as if Aquaman is the only volume that omits the Rebirth special. Everything else (assuming GA also has its Rebirth special) has it. Perhaps this is actually a mistake on the Aquaman solicit, and the Rebirth special will actually be included? Seems strange that they'd include them in all the books... except Aquaman?

I really doubt The Flash, Vol 1 Rebirth will stop at issue 6. The solicitations for October say the first story, "lightening Strikes Twice", will run to issue 8. Hopefully this collects the whole first story, like Wonder Woman will collect the odd numbered "Lies" story.

That's not unusual, though. In fact, it happens a lot. Many of the early volumes of the New 52 had the same thing happen: you had a few of the final issues of an arc in the next trade, followed by either a smaller arc or the beginning of the next arc. I think it would be even more unlikely for DC to collect nine issues in a single volume trade like this. The price would certainly shoot up. It's much more likely that this volume will collect Rebirth and the first six issues, and the second volume will simply follow course.

Most likely these are placeholder descriptions. These trades are still several months away from coming out, and DC probably hasn't yet determined how to order the chapters. Some of these trades even collect issues that will never exist (see: Grayson Vol. 5)

I believe at least some art from the unpublished issue 25 of Swamp Thing showed up on the internet a while back, so maybe they're following the lead of some of the Cancelled Comics Cavalcade material and including the B&W art of that issue in the omnibus? That would definitely be a selling point to people who already have the initial dozen issues. I'm glad to see the non-Wein stuff collected, as I remember it as being decent Swamp Thing material, at least up until the last issue or so, when it started to go a little more super-hero like with costumed villains and a horrible, horrible new logo

It really is interesting. What they do with hardcovers will tell the tale, but to start this suggests to me that if hardcovers aren't selling as well as paperback, the trade market isn't what we think it is. Or digital is really eating into that space.

I don't think anyone would have thought we would see the day these stories would possibly see collected in trade form. Utterly amazing.

Now we just have to patiently await the inevitable Peter David Aquaman stuff and, dare I say it, The Flash vol.2 starring Wally West run starting with Mike Baron's first 14 issues and then William Messner-Loebs issues #15-28 and 30-61 before Mark Waid takes over. My life will be complete.

I am interested to see how far DC is willing to go in publishing Wonder Woman leading up to the movie.

The only things post Golden Age / Pre Crisis collected of the Wonder Woman Title (in color) is one Archive edition beginning at the silver age reboot, the Diana Prince "mod era" stories, and the 12 Labors trade.

I've been loving Dan Jurgen's recent Superman work, and hope they amend the Action Comics vol.1 contents above to include the Luthor-centric Justice League #52 he wrote. Tt serves as a great lead-in to his new run on Action, and perfectly framed Luthor's impetus for wanting to take over as the new Supes. Fantastic issue, IMO.

I am happy to see these new collections as a lot of them look awesome. In the last months I have been trying to cut back a little on the New52 and focus on the really good titles. But I guess the game begins anew with rebirth, as a lot of these new titles and creative teams look great. I am especially looking forward to Greg Rucka being back on Wonder Woman! As a trade waiter I haven't read any of the Rebirth stuff yet, except the DCU Rebirth Special. So now I am trying to figure out which New52 trades I should get to prepare for rebirth. Titans Hunt and Lois & Clark, for example, are already on my list. But there are a few I am on the fence about. Perhaps you guys can help me!?

- Green Arrow, Vol. 8 & 9 by Ben Percy, who is also writing the new GA series.- Aquaman, Vol. 8 by Dan Abnett, who is also the new writer of Aquaman.- Robin: Son of Batman, Vol. 1 & 3. Is it at all relevant for Damian Wayne Post-Rebirth?- Justice League United, Vol. 2 & 3. Anything of consequence in there?- Green Lantern: Lost Army/Edge of Oblivion. Any relevance for Rebirth?

The latest issues of Aquaman have been referencing some stuff from Abnett's pre-Rebirth arc, so I'd say it's a good idea to get Aquaman Vol. 8. Percy's Rebirth Green Arrow, on the other hand, is accessible enough that you don't have to read his pre-Rebirth run beforehand.

As for the other books you mentioned, you can safely skip them, unless you're curious to see where the Green Lantern Corps were before they made their way back to current universe.

After the awkward mess that was the post-Convergence Aquaman run by (the normally excellent) Cullen Bunn, Dan Abnett's final few issues of new52 Aquaman were SUCH an excellent breath of fresh air and starting-over. It really felt like a too-early Rebirth in its own right, and could easily be considered "Book Zero" of the Aquaman relaunch (similar to how Abnett's excellent "Titans Hunt" miniseries leads into his Titans Rebirth as well.)-Mike Wood

I can't wait for these Rebirth trades. I've been trying to find the series out of Rebirth that I want to collect the singles for, but I'm still very excited to start collecting the trades to all the titles (my goal) and am waiting very paitently to gaze upon their spine art.

Question about Batman Knightfall omnibus. I thought the whole series was collected into three softcover omnibuses, was I wrong?

The only confusing part of the Rebirth collections I have is The Flash. I'm a bit surprised that the Rebirth special isn't included in it since the Rebirth 1 of Flash ties the most heavily to that epic special.

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